


devotion I never knew

by jasminetea



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Little Mermaid, M/M, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 15:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jasminetea/pseuds/jasminetea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scenes from a life: Erik is looking for vengeance.  Charles is a merman searching for his sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	devotion I never knew

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/5215.html?thread=7287135#t7287135)'s bonus.
> 
> This was supposed to be a longer piece, with weird things going on with chronologically, but I don't think I'll ever get to writing the long version. So, here are some scenes from it.
> 
> Music: Florence + the Machine (ft. Kid Harpoon)'s "Never Let You Go (Live at the Hackney)," Namie Amuro's "Wishing on the Same Star (Orchestra Ver.)," and Massive Attack's "Unfinished Sympathy."

_“Did I make the right choice, Charles?”_

_  
Charles smiles at him.  “You could not have made a wrong one, dear heart.”_

_Erik closes his eyes.  He is curled into Charles, his arms around his waist, his legs cradling Charles’ tail._

_When the time comes, they will sit like this, and Charles will take to the bottom of the sea and lay him to rest.  Until that time, they watch the ebb and flow of water, the sun rising._

 

 

 

“Shaw has a woman with him, with skin like milk, moonlit hair, and diamond eyes.”

 

Charles looks at him with interest, “She sounds like something out of a fairy tale.”

 

Erik glances at Charles’ tail still immersed in seawater.  Charles smiles sheepishly.

 

 

 

“My sister is lost to me.  She comes to the shore sometimes; she can still hear the call of the sea, and she calls back to it.”  Charles pauses and looks at Erik with those queer eyes.  “I don’t go to her anymore; she is gone by the time I come.

 

My sister is lost to me.

 

But I still hope.”

 

Erik has nothing he can say to that.  He is filled with hot, brittle feelings that spill out of his every movement; he does not hope for reconciliation, he hopes for the end of a long war with the spilling of hot blood.

 

 

 

“How do you know so much about people?  Do you read minds?”

 

“No.”  Charles looks pensively off into the distance, leaning his chin into the palm of his wet hand.  “We’ve just had enough time to watch you and learn what it is you do and why.  There really isn't much variation.  It’s not the kind of magic you’re thinking of.”

 

 

 

Erik will remember this as a dream.  A woman in white speaking to Charles.

 

“I made my choice,” she says.

 

And Charles replies in turn, “And so have I.”

 

“You are stupid, Charles,” and Erik thinks he hears sympathy.

 

 

 

“My sister fell in love with a man.  She gave up the sea for him, for legs to walk beside him.  He betrayed her, but still she stayed with him.

 

We are foolish in love.”

 

Erik snorts, and whittles the driftwood.  “And where is she now?”

  
Charles says nothing, and merely reaches for Erik’s carving.  He hands it over, and Charles’ hands learn every groove of the seal Erik’s made.

 

 

 

“We may only change form once.  Once we take legs, we can never return.”

 

“Then why would you?”

 

Charles looks at Erik as if the answer should be obvious.  “Love, of course.”

 

 

 

Erik dreams of diving down to the bottom of the sea with Charles.  He lays his head in the cradle of Charles lap and breathes water. 

 

They lie on the beach together, and Erik’s never felt so at peace.

 

 

 

Erik finds Shaw and Charles together.  There is blood everywhere.  Shaw’s hands are covered in it up to his elbows, the knife still in his hands, and he wipes it and his hands across his pants.

 

Erik feels the edges of fear creep into his soul.  “What have you done?”

 

“Come see, darling child.”  He steps aside, and with a flourish reveals Charles’ beached body.

 

Charles, his beautiful, beautifully strange merman, _friend_ –   Shaw had taken that knife and split him tail to groin, and Erik can see the grain of his muscles, the torn scales, the ribbing of fat, the slow ooze of liquid and blood into the sand.  Erik would be sick if he believed Shaw wouldn’t take the moment to gut him as well. 

 

Charles’ muscles spasm, and Erik calls Shaw’s name for their reunion.

 

 

 

_“Had you given up that I would return?”  Charles laughs gently.  
  
_

_“No, never that.”  And Erik lets his knees sink into the sand and draws Charles close, not caring that he’ll be shaking sand out his clothes the next few days.  He’s always finding sand there anyway, in the creases of clothes, in the crevices of the floorboards of his house by the sea.  Emma said Charles would come to shore for him; she hadn’t said how Erik would come to the water for Charles._

It comes to a decision made on a beach.  Looking down at Charles’ face in his lap, and Shaw’s stiff, lifeless one nearby – both with sand crusting their faces and the damp sea breeze blowing their hair – they look alike, and the similarity makes Erik’s hands shake.

 

Erik doesn’t know what to do.  He cannot slip his arms beneath Charles’ tail, not with it ripped the way it is.  Charles’ head stays cradled in Erik’s lap, eyes closed, and all Erik can do is look unmoving.

 

“You have a choice to make, Erik Lehnsherr.”  It is a woman’s voice, and when Erik looks up, he sees her standing on the rocks.

 

“You,” he says, “you were with Shaw.”

 

“His, yes.”  She looks at the body in Erik’s arms.

 

She steps off the rocks and through the shallow water to him.  “What will you do?  If you leave him like this, his tail will disappear, the scales scatter to the wind – he will have legs, new, unused, feet soft.  He will become mortal, his immortality slipped away; the sea will cease to call to him with time.  The memory of what is lost will remain with him for as long as he lives.

 

You can love him as men love.”

 

Erik holds Charles closer.  This woman, Erik knows her kind will tell him what she wishes, so he waits for her to finish.

 

“Or you can return him to the sea.  He will swim in the water with his kind, he will come to the shore, linger at it to be with you. 

 

You will die, and he will remember you.  He will sing you songs – sing your song to all who pass.”

 

He looks down at Charles again and the length of body that slides from human flesh to slippery, scaled sea creature. 

 

“He will not wake in time to make this choice.”  Her voice is tinged with pity and affection.  “He placed it in your hands long ago, so it is yours, now.  So I ask you, Erik Lehnsherr, what will you do?”

 

Erik has long dreamt of mapping Charles body, discovering the planes of his body, what it would take to make him gasp in pleasure, what his face would look like as he came.  But more than that, he wants to grow old with this man, wake next to his body in the sunlight, make their bed together.  It is a selfish dream though, and he knows it.

 

So he lifts Charles’ body, trying to hold the disparate halves of his tail together as well as he can.

 

He wades into the ocean, leaving a trail of scales behind him, and when he is deep enough, he sets Charles down, and does not let go until the waves take him.

 

He looks out, wondering how long it will be, his hands empty.

 

“Farewell, Erik,” the woman’s voice calls one last time, her voice like sea foam.  “Take care of my brother.”

 

Erik looks back to shore, and follows the path of her footprints to see her figure disappearing into the distance.  He can hear the lament already forming on the wind for the man she had loved.

 

“Goodbye, Emma Frost.”

 

With one last glance to the ocean, he too, walks back to land.

**Author's Note:**

> Emma's dialogue is influenced by Peter Beagle's _The Last Unicorn._


End file.
